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Friday, 3 February 2012

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses is essentially a coming of age story. After
his mother sells the Texan ranch he has grown up on, sixteen year old John
Grady Cole loses everything and sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey
Rawlins. They are both searching for work as a ranch hand and abit of
adventure. On the Mexican border they both meet Jimmy Blevins a young boy whose
hot-headedness leads them into big trouble.

Much of the story is set on the Mexican boarder where
the landscapes are vividly described. Readers of McCarthy will know already how
well landscapes and the country are so well drawn that you cannot think of the
characters without also thinking of the landscapes they inhabit.

The novel is set in 1949 but you wouldn’t know it as it
has the feel of a western, so much so that I was surprised when planes and
other more modern mod-cons were mentioned. Most of the travel is done in rugged
landscapes on horseback and the place and characters in All the Pretty Horses
seem cut off from the rest of the world. The plot does kind of plod along which
I think is deliberate and while I appreciated this style in context with the
novel this style certainly didn’t make it a page turner.However I did keep reading because of the
descriptions, the dialogue, the plot and of course the writing.

Like The Road and Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses
will be a book that stays with me although out of those three I would recommend
The Road and Blood Meridian more as it took me a little longer (around 30
pages) to get into this one compared with the other McCormacs I have read.

Curious that you would put Blood Meridian ahead of All the Pretty Horses. While I have yet to read The Road, I would say that All the Pretty Horses is a far more accessible and overall appealing novel than Blood Meridian, if not better written. I struggled at times with Blood Meridian, partly because of McCarthy's style (which I was completely unprepared for) and partly because of the tone and taste of the book. All the Pretty Horses made my appreciation of McCarthy's style grow, in addition to impressing me overall with the way McCarthy told his story. I'm still on the fence regarding which book is technically better, but for me at least it was a lot harder getting through Blood Meridian than it was All the Pretty Horses...

I totally agree that All the pretty horses is more accessible but Blood Meridian I think is better written and although it was a really differcult read due to the nature of it, it has really stayed with me since whereas I know All the Pretty Horses wont as much. It was also harder for me to get through Blood Meridian.

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We are a married couple and we live in Surrey in the UK. Inbetween working and looking after our very active toddler we both read. We both read very different genres of books so hopefully there is something here for everyone.